


avoid your exes

by angularmomentum



Series: #dirtbags [1]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic), Hockey RPF
Genre: Casual Sex, Comedy, Dirtbags - Freeform, M/M, Missing Teeth, Multi, Non-Monogamy, Threesome, don't look at my boner when we fight, that time claude giroux got arrested for groping a cop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-12
Updated: 2017-04-12
Packaged: 2018-10-18 01:03:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10606062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angularmomentum/pseuds/angularmomentum
Summary: Perhaps the chain of causation here is mostly “Claude is an idiot.”Or: it's not fuckbuddies if you don't like each other, right?





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lanyon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanyon/gifts), [llwyncelyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/llwyncelyn/gifts).



> _Lanyon: which NHL players has Kent Parson slept with?_  
>     
>  _Me: ..._
> 
> _Llwyncelyn: don't just say "all of them."_
> 
> This fic is brought to you by Procrastination! It's A Hell Of A Drug!

-

Ottawa

-

Claude, at 24, should know better than to grab a cop’s magnificent ass, probably, but Claude is also very drunk and recently dumped, and now Claude is in jail.

Claude would admit, if pressed, that day drinking on a Tuesday downtown is a questionable life choice. It’s just that he’s twelve beers deep by the time the cops show up, and one of them just has— wow, a great ass. Look, Claude has a vested interest in a great ass, and the fact that Kent is hanging around somewhere playing some passive-aggressive game of keep-away with Zimmermann by staying in Ontario doesn’t dispel Claude’s beer-addled curiosity. The least Parse could do is drop by if he’s in the neighbourhood on some kind of furious gaycation. Claude, feeling a little loose (“a little”) isn’t above antagonising him about it, which would at least kill a few hours, and most of his sexual frustration.

Perhaps the chain of causation here is mostly “Claude is an idiot” but the drunk tank in Ottawa Metro isn’t that full, so only one guy gives him shit about missing the playoffs.

Claude passes out on the bench with his feet crunched up into the corner and the brim of his hat a truly terrible pillow.

It’s pretty good sleep, if you ignore the threat of vomit and the close company of three bikers who happen to be Sens fans.

—

Claude is not prepared to wake up in the middle of the night ever, much less when he’s still kind of drunk but also sober enough to know he’s going to have a monstrous hangover in a couple hours.

“The fuck?” Claude mutters, when someone elbows him.

“Someone’s posted bail,” the cop on duty says, trying not to make it obvious that she’s leaning away from him.

The threat of charges is a distant clamour somewhere, but mostly Claude is groggy and his mouth tastes like he downed twelve beers and got arrested. Luckily Claude is Vomit Free Since Oh-Three, barring that time he got salmonella at the lake, so at least there’s no threat of being photographed with anything unfortunate in his beard.

The cops hand him back his wallet, keys and belt, and Claude has to sign out on something his lawyer will probably roll up like a magazine and swat him on the nose with. His temples are throbbing and his eyes feel like someone ground sand into them, so he does it anyway just to get it over with.

The exit clangs behind him.

"I hate you, man," Kent tells him, leaning against the beige paint like he’s got nothing better to do in the middle of the night than be Claude’s bail proxy.

"Calisse," Claude mutters, "not so loud.”

"You get sympathy when you haven't been arrested for groping Mounties, you walking stereotype.”

 "Yeah, well nobody's forcin' you to be here, eh?" Claude does not feel it would be worth it to point out that it wasn’t a Mountie. If he’d groped a Mountie he’d be dead.

"You'll make it up to me," Kent points out. “Here’s your tooth.”

Claude catches the plastic bridge when Kent throws it at him, encased in a plastic baggie with _Biologique_ written on it in red. “How—”

“I asked,” Kent says, shit-eating grin in full force.

Claude grabs his hat off in retaliation, freeing Parse’s stupid blonde cowlick, but then a wave of nausea hits him and Claude has to brace himself on the wall.

As usual, Kent smells like lavender and the inside of his snapback.

“If you puke on my shoes I’ll film it,” Kent says, grabbing Claude by the shirt collar. “Come on, my hotel’s three blocks away.”

Claude uses Kent’s toothbrush and falls asleep mashed up against his back, and in the morning Kent puts on Taylor Swift at a truly cruel volume and blows Claude in the shower.

Claude returns the favour, obviously. A guy doesn’t bail you out of jail in the middle of the night without at least a handy in return.

“Word is you got dumped!” Kent yells, rearranging the bed nest he’s made for himself around Claude’s bulk and the ludicrous amount of pillows the Hilton has provided for him, while Taylor is telling them they’ll never get back together.

“It was mutual,” Claude yells back, debating how much dignity he can stand to lose by burying his face in Kent’s chest. He hates him.

“Whatever.” Kent opens the room service menu and yanks Claude’s hair. “I’m getting waffles.”

Claude should call the dog sitter, and probably his mom. Claude should turn his phone on and deal with whatever he has to deal with. Claude is powerfully hungover and Parson is very warm. Claude goes back to sleep.

-

Dallas

-

"Heads." Sidney calls it just before Geno flips the loonie Sid found at the bottom of his bag, verdigrised but serviceable.

Geno catches it. He peeks under his covering hand, and an ominous grin creeps across his long face.

"Oh no you fucking don't! Best of three."

"Sorry Sid. We do best of three then best of five, then best seven. Remember air hockey?" Geno's grin widens as he holds the coin up, displaying the bird instead of Queen Elizabeth. "I'm have terrible cramps. So sad."

"I'll--"

"Deal is deal, Sid." Geno flicks the traitorous, unpatriotic coin at Sid's chest. "You All-Star. Congrats!" Sidney lobs the coin back at him but Geno just catches it. "I'm keep this."

Sid could kill him sometimes. That's what he gets for not negotiating best of seven with a rock paper scissors playoff round.

-

The All-Star is in Dallas, which Sidney considers a personal affront. For one thing it’s too hot and for another Seguin lives there, and thus every single likely bar is going to be staked out like the press are wildlife documentarians waiting for buffaloes at the watering hole.

It’s just Sidney’s luck that the first person he runs into is Parson. Sid is of the firm opinion that there are enough cowboy hats in the world without the one Parse shoves on his head at the pre-game drinks thing the night before. Sid could also happily do without Kent popping bubblegum in his ear and leaning in for a semi-drunken selfie before Sid shoves him off.

“Squid!” Parson yells, quite possibly well on his way to trashed. “I hear you lost your coin toss.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Sid mutters, as a photographer, scenting blood, starts homing in on them. Sid removes the cowboy hat. “Go get someone else drunk off your fumes.”

“That stings, man.” Kent grins at the camera, all his teeth on display. The photographer gives them a thumbs up and moves on. Sid breathes a sigh of deep relief.

“Don’t you have an entourage to go pander to?” Sidney mutters out the side of his mouth. “Some TV channel following you around?”

“Says the guy with an Emmy.”

Sidney decides not to dignify that with an answer, until Parse slips a hand into Sidney’s back pocket. Sid, extremely aware of the crowded room, does not jump. Instead, he pinches Parse viciously just above the waistband of his jeans, and Parse yelps.

“Listen,” Parse says, taking the hint and removing his hand from Sid’s pocket. “I’m going to be straight with you—“

Sidney cannot hold in the snort.

“—Rude,” Parse says. “I know you’re going to want to take out your frustration when Pacific crushes Metro this weekend on someone, so I’m willing to propose an arrangement.”

Sidney is immediately suspicious. “Look, just because we got a little weird at the Olympics—“

“I’ll buy you dinner if you tell G you were just overcome by my insane game,” Parse says, lopsided smile turning smug. “He’ll shit himself.”

Whatever weird rivalry Kent Parson has with Claude Giroux has always been a mystery to Sidney, who doesn’t particularly appreciate being placed squarely in the middle, except for how that mental image has momentarily robbed him of the ability to think about anything else. “I— no, come on, I’m not going to be your consolation prize when we ruin you, I have self-respect.”

“I’ll remember you said that,” Parse fires back. “Room number’s in your pocket, by the way.”

Sid is about to say something when Parson spots Ovechkin, blanches, and melts back into the crowd like he was never there. Sid hates him.

“Sidney Crosby!” Ovi declares, a drink in each hand and a huge smile creasing his bearded cheeks. His missing tooth makes him look like a cave man. Sidney thinks he might secretly be a genius. “Zhenya says you lost coin toss! I am happy you here, Metro will win for sure.” He hands Sid a drink like Sid asked for one, but seeing as he’s scared Parson off Sid takes it out of politeness. It’s a martini. He’ll never understand Russians. “Parson is still scared?”

“What did you do to him?”

Ovechkin laughs, leaning down conspirationally. “Ask Backy.”

Sidney is not going anywhere near that. He drinks the martini.

 -

Everyone gets drunk at the All-Star. It’s a tradition.

Sid makes a point not to be filmed trashed but that doesn’t mean he’s never touched a drop in his life. He’d just prefer not to play hungover, so he manages to restrain himself to two martinis and a beer. He doesn’t feel fresh in the morning, but the 3-on-3 goes better for him than it does for Parson, who is purple under the eyes and a surprisingly good sport about it.

Ovechkin mashes him into the boards, but gently. Giroux, chilling on the bench behind Sid, completely unconcerned to be getting no ice time, leans into Sid’s space and says: “What’s the money he fucked one of Backstrom’s ducklings?”

Sid can feel himself flush. He looks back at Claude, taking in the unfortunate reddish hickey on his freckled neck. “Oh, tell me you didn’t.”

“Don’t make me a liar,” G says, propping his bearded chin on the end of his stick. “You gonna call a line-change or what?”

Sid waves at Ovechkin and they switch off.

Parson grins between Sid and Claude over the blue line, and pats his own ass, where a pocket would be if hockey pads had pockets. Sid wants to pull his own over his head and live there for a second, because nothing will ever be more embarrassing than the way Giroux sticks his tongue in the hole where his tooth ought to be and whistles at Parson.

Sid buries the puck more out of formality than anything else, and Giroux taps him in the back of the knees with his stick in casual congratulations.

Sidney hates him on principle of course; he’s an absolutely filthy player, he’s got a criminal record, and everything about him is orange, a colour Sidney is conditioned in the way of Pavlov’s dogs to despise.

Claude drops his helmet and drags his short fingers through the sweaty mass of his carrot-coloured hair, and all Sid can think is that if he does this again he really will have to go to confession next time he’s at home.

Stupid All-Star. Stupid hickey. Stupid 202 on a crumpled place setting card in the back pocket of Sid’s second-favourite jeans.

-

“I win,” Parse announces when he opens the door to his hotel room wrapped in a rumpled sheet like some kind of debauched statue.

“You look ridiculous,” Sid tells him.

“Feel free to leave.” Parse looks back over his shoulder, and Sid doesn’t need to spot the awful pink shirt on the floor to know who he’s talking to when he says: “pay up, asshole, he showed.”

“I want steak,” Sid whispers, before he raises his voice. “I was just… overcome… by your game.”

Giroux sticks his head out of the covers and yells something disbelieving in garbled French. Sid lets the laugh that’s been threatening for a while bubble up just as Parson drags him into the room by the belt, feeling hot all over, light and buoyed even as a part of him recognises what a sincerely terrible idea this will always be.

Parson drops the sheet and climbs back into bed, grabs Claude by the hair and kisses him, effectively shutting him up.

Sid watches, fixated, as Claude’s legs — god, so _orange,_ Sidney hates himself — wrap around Parse’s solid hips.

He drops his shirt on top of Claude’s to hide the eye-searing salmon of it, and grabs a condom off the pile on the side table.

Parse pats him on the top of the head with a pleased mumble and moves out of the way so Sid can take the spot between them.

If fucking could be described as competitive (which: Sidney’s not completely incapable of looking at himself) this both does and doesn’t fit the bill. Parse keeps Claude going until he’s literally ready to bite him, and Claude blows Sid so hard and fast Parson high-fives him when Sid loses his load. But then, Claude digs his thumbs into the corded muscle of Parson’s thighs and even though it looks like it ought to hurt, Parson just melts back into the pillows and grins at him, too spent to be more than half hard, and Parson is pretty willing to kiss Sid until he’s gasping, even though it’s only Sid’s oral fixation that’s being indulged.

The sky’s going light around the blackout blinds by the time Sid thinks about leaving, but even then he takes a second to recover, lying facedown between them while Parse traces an idle pattern on Sid’s well-bitten ass.

“Rain check on the steak?” Parse asks, kneading him like a weird cat.

Sid is tired and not really that hungry yet. He just mumbles something to the effect of yes and turns over just as Claude stretches next to him, sweaty and really not attractive at all, except for how Sid kind of wants to lick him a little bit more than he wants to punch him. “Hey,” Sid says, brain entirely disconnected from his mouth by endorphins and the early hour, “it’s kind of funny how you guys have the same colour pubes. Matching dicks.”

Claude laughs so hard his entire body curls into it. Parson lets out a low, wounded noise, checking under the blankets for confirmation.

Claude is still wheezing in bed when Parse kicks Sidney out, shoving him half-dressed into the hall with both hands on his shoulders. “You’re banned,” Kent hisses. “Out.”

Sid is still sore when he flies back to Pittsburgh, but the memory of Parson yelling about “strawberry blonde, come on you assholes, see if I finger either of you ever again!” sustains him for weeks.

**Author's Note:**

> don't @ me i hate this as much as you do


End file.
